Since canceling my order with the consumer division of Dell Computers was proving to be near impossible, I decided to focus on my more immediate task of getting a computer quickly. I told a friend about 
what I was going through and he had a great offer: I could try buying a computer through Dell's Small Business Division, by ordering through his company.
He gave me the number of the Dell Small Business rep who handled his company's account. The phone was answered on the first ring. The man who answered did have an accent - you know, a bit midwestern -like from Ohio- and within 10 painless minutes, my computer was ordered. I was assured that going through the Small Business Division meant the computer would get to me much quicker than going through the Consumer Divsion. Great! My laptop was being built and would arrive in a couple of days. And get this- if there was any problem, I could continue to speak to the man with the midwest accent. No more calling 800 numbers that take you all the way to Bombay.
Now that I was sure a computer would be arriving soon, I went back to trying to cancel my first order with the consumer division. After an hour or so of phone prompts and misdirected calls, I again found myself speaking to yet another woman with a strong Indian accent and an all-American name. Get this: she told me that it was now too late to cancel the computer- since it had already been shipped!
How could this be? Just yesterday I was told that the laptop couldn't be built until some new parts came in and so it didn't have a ghost of a chance of arriving until after July 5th. The outsourced customer service rep answered me quite frankly: they have no idea when these things will go out. They're not privy to this kind of information and so they're just taking wild guesses. Terrific. Now I had two computers in transit.
I rolled my eyes back into their sockets and told her I didn't need two computers. "No problem, " she told me. "well send a message to Fedex telling them to cancel the computer from the consumer division."
Can you guess what happened next?
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